This is the second story of a series we will run throughout September looking at Ohio’s role in the upcoming election. Read past stories at DaytonDailyNews.com/go/election.
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Local voters talk about issues they are focused on. XX
How are local congressional races shaping up. B1
Southwest Ohio has long been painted politically red thanks to its mix of suburban metropolitan areas in Dayton and Cincinnati, rock-ribbed Republicans in the rural areas outside both cities and and a traditionally conservative Cincinnati.
But the region is changing. Montgomery County, which gave Sen. John Kerry a slight 4,600-vote edge over President George W. Bush in 2004, provided then Sen. Barack Obama with a 17,000-vote cushion over Sen. John McCain in 2008. Hamilton County, which hadn’t gone for a Democrat since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964, went for Obama by more than 29,000 votes.
Overall the region favored McCain, but not nearly enough to close the gap in an election that saw him lose Ohio by more than 260,000 votes.
Tim Burke, chairman of the Hamilton County Democratic Party, is confident Obama can pull off another win in the once-reliable Republican stronghold.
He said Obama’s grassroots network didn’t completely disband after the 2008 election, and Democratic organization efforts got a shot in the arm last year while working to repeal Senate Bill 5.
“Four years ago, they had a very extensive ground campaign,” Burke said. “That pales to the organization they’ve got in place this time.”
For their part, Republicans say the pro-Obama energy isn’t as strong as it was four years ago and Hamilton County will swing Republican again. Surrounding Clermont, Butler and Warren Counties are key counties for the Republicans.
Bob Bennett, chairman of the Ohio Republican Party, said Obama unites conservative Republicans in the region and they’ll show up in full force at the polls. Bennett said the race is tight, though he believes the tide will turn when the candidates debate in October.
“There’s a lot of independent voters, but they’re conservative independent voters in Hamilton County,” Bennett said.
Republicans have amped up their ground game. Romney pollster Neil Newhouse said last week the campaign has made five times more phone calls and knocked on 28 times more doors in Ohio than they had at this point in 2008.
Democrats tout a grassroots network that operates 21 campaign offices in the region, from as far north as Troy and as far south as New Richmond.
It’s the economy, again
Like the nation as a whole, local voters from Springfield to the Cincinnati area say this election is about the economy and jobs. In last month’s Ohio Poll from the University of Cincinnati, 53 percent of southwest Ohio voters picked the economy as the most important election issue, blowing away the No. 2 issue of health care, which got 14 percent of the vote.
The truth is that Ohio is ahead of much of the nation in its recovery from the recession. In his Regional Economic Report for summer 2012, Wright State University economics professor Thomas Traynor forecast that the “relatively steady and gradual year-over-year growth” seen by the Dayton area the past two years is expected to continue.
And while 1 percent growth won’t shock the world, Traynor pointed out that even small job growth is better than the annual declines the region suffered from 2000-09 as the manufacturing base collapsed.
Richard Stock, director of the University of Dayton’s Business Research Group, said the Cincinnati area stands out as a state leader in the economic recovery, with growth across several employment sectors. And he said the Dayton area is helped by the stability of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and growth in the medical and education sectors.
The question is whether southwest Ohio voters recognize the slow, steady turnaround in the local economy, and if so, who they credit for it. Obama says that his auto bailout was crucial in Ohio’s recovery, while Gov. John Kasich says his administration’s Republican policies led the rebound since taking office in 2011.
Eric Rademacher, co-director of the Ohio Poll, says despite some steps toward recovery, he doesn’t think Ohioans’ confidence in the economy will be largely restored before Election Day.
“I don’t think the impression that the loss of jobs had on voters has gone away,” Rademacher said. “More people are able to find a job, but it’s often well below the earnings, benefits and the skills of the job they previously had.”
And despite all the claims, Beavercreek college student Leslie Nutter said she’s not sure how much impact politicians really have on the job market. Dayton youth minister William Carter said he thinks job success depends more on the individual, with government only there with some programs to help people pull themselves up.
That doesn’t stop the campaigns from trying to score points on the economy. Gene Beaupre, a Xavier University professor who has helped run past campaigns, said in order to gain ground on the key issue of the economy, candidates have to make specific arguments that resonate with voters.
Mitt Romney did so at the Republican convention, touting his plan to create 12 million jobs nationwide. And Obama has his own number, claiming that the auto bailout helped save more than 800,000 jobs in Ohio.
So far, Romney has the edge on this issue according to the Ohio Poll, with 54 percent of southwest Ohioans saying Romney would do a better job handling the economy, compared with 41 percent for Obama.
Demographics shift
Obama won 80 percent of minority voters in 2008.
Nationally, minority voters have steadily increased their share of the vote — by 9 points between 1988 and 2008, according to Census Bureau data. And turnout rate increased among minority voters in 2008 compared to 2004 and decreased among white voters.
But Obama won a larger percentage of white voters in Ohio than nationally.
“The Democrats think they can make a play for this area,” said Dan Birdsong, a political scientist at the University of Dayton. “And I think they’re using [Vice President Joe] Biden very well to drive up some turnout in places where they haven’t done very well in the past.”
Birdsong said Biden makes an effective surrogate in southwestern Ohio because he’s relatable. And Birdsong said Biden’s visit to Milford in Clermont County last week is evidence the Obama campaign has a good reason to send him there.
McCain beat Obama there 2-1 in 2008.
Ohio’s urban counties, with the exception of Columbus’ Franklin County, have seen white residents move to surrounding counties, thus diversifying the remaining population. Political experts point to this as the reason Obama won Hamilton County.
The county’s overall population grew from 2005 to 2010, but white population decreased 1.4 percent and the African American population increased 6.5 percent during that same time, according to Census Bureau Data.
“As that demographic grows within the region, if Republicans can’t counter Democratic inroads to those groups, they won’t have an effect,” Birdsong said.
Rademacher said the population shifts around Cincinnati have increased both parties’ interest in the area. He said Democrats want to build on their victory in the former “enemy territory” of Hamilton County in 2008. And Republicans like to visit the “ruby-red” areas of Butler and Warren counties, where they get great crowds and can energize their base.
Religion, race and money
Birdsong said the region’s conservative leanings date back to German immigrants guided by strong Catholic and protestant faiths settling here. Catholicism is still very strong in southwest Ohio — the Archdiocese is the No. 7 employer in the Cincinnati area — and Cincinnati is the home of the conservative group Citizens for Community Values and a robust Right to Life anti-abortion contingent.
But even in a year when religious groups criticized Obama over requirements for contraception coverage, Rademacher said religion takes a back seat to the economy, and relatively few voters would be single-issue voters on religion. Beaupre added that the campaigns have so much information on voters today that they often know who prioritizes religious issues and can target campaign messages to them via phone calls, e-mails and social media.
Political scientists say Obama’s race still factors into the decisions of many voters in the southern half of Ohio. Birdsong said voters don’t consciously think of race, which makes it hard for pollsters to accurately measure racial feelings.
“People are not going to show themselves to be bigots or anything else,” Birdsong said. “It’s one of those things we have to ask about in certain ways to solicit an honest response.”
Ohio gets a lot of national attention but doesn’t contribute much financially to presidential campaigns. Despite that, both candidates have visited southwest Ohio to raise money.
The southwest corner of the state has contributed more money to Romney’s campaign than any other in Ohio — $1.7 million of the $4.5 million he’s raised in the Buckeye State, according to Federal Election Commission reports. Obama has netted just under $1 million from the region — about one-third of his Ohio haul — but raised only half as much as Romney in the Cincinnati area.
Who has the edge?
In 2008, southwest Ohio voted solidly Republican, going 54-44 for John McCain. And this year’s Republican primary bodes well for Romney here, as he beat Rick Santorum by a wider margin in this region (40-34) than he did statewide (38-37), winning all six of the area’s biggest counties.
But last month’s Ohio Poll may reflect the changing face of the region. While southwest Ohio has traditionally been the Republican stronghold of the state, the poll showed Romney leading Obama by only 4 points here — a smaller lead than he had in northwest, southeast or central Ohio.
On the seven issue questions — asking voters which candidate would better handle the economy, foreign policy and other topics — southwest Ohio was the No. 1 Republican region of the state on only one question.
“It’s a reflection of a region that has become more competitive. There are still plenty of moderates in both parties, and sometimes they get lost in the attention paid to the extremes,” Rademacher said. “It was a lot easier and safer to paint southwest Ohio as a more (homogeneous) region two decades ago, but there’s a lot more diversity now.”
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